The NCAA is facing a number of existential legal and legislative threats to its current system of unpaid student-athletes.

Critics, including former players, say that Division I college athletes — particularly men’s football and basketball — have become a big business that enriches colleges and coaches while leaving students out.

Oral arguments are underway in a class-action suit brought Ed O’Bannon — a former UCLA star basketball player suing over the NCAA’s use of his name and image in television broadcasts, marketing materials and video games.

In addition, a regional National Labor Relations Board this year also determined that Northwestern football players were employees of their university. That ruling opened the door for players across the country at top schools to try to form labor unions, though an appeal is pending at the national board.

The NCAA has long contended that its athletes are primarily students — amateur players who often receive something tantamount to a free education in exchange for playing a sport in their spare time.

“We strongly disagree with the notion that student-athletes are employees. We frequently hear from student-athletes, across all sports, that they participate to enhance their overall college experience and for the love of their sport, not to be paid,” the NCAA said in a statement following the NLRB’s ruling in March.

More recently, Congress has also waded into the issue. The House Education and the Workforce Committee held a May hearing to discuss the status of students playing for top NCAA Division I schools — calling top university officials to the Hill to discuss the issue.

“We’ve been over this and over this and over this,” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said at the hearing. “You can rail against unionization, but you better address the problem. … You can keep defending it, but I’d work on changing it.”

BHFS D.C. managing partner Marc Lampkin and lobbyist Al Mottur will take a lead on the NCAA client work, while Brooks Brunson and Elizabeth Gore will also work on the account.

Lampkin is a veteran GOP strategist with close ties to House Republican leadership, while Mottur is a veteran of Capitol Hill and the Federal Communications Commission.

The NCAA also has long had in-house lobbying operation but has no outside firms in recent years. It spent $180,000 on lobbying in 2013.